NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2019: Transfer of Antimicrobial Resistance Genes between Humans, Animals, and the Environment in urban Bangladesh

该行动为2019财年美国国家科学基金会生物学博士后研究奖学金提供资金，扩大生物学中代表性不足群体的参与。该奖学金支持研究员的一项研究和培训计划，该计划将增加生物学中代表性不足的群体的参与。这项研究将调查抗生素耐药性的传播，这是对社会的一个日益严重的威胁，对低收入和高收入国家都有影响。虽然抗生素耐药性的全球传播很容易观察到，但抗生素耐药性在家庭规模上的转移尚未得到很好的了解。该研究员将探讨抗生素耐药基因如何在低收入和中等收入国家的家庭层面上在人、动物和环境之间传播。该项目将确定宿主之间抗生素耐药性转移的最重要的环境介导途径。从了解抗生素耐药性如何传播中获得的知识可用于更好地制定政策、工程控制和建议对抗抗菌素耐药性的行为。为了增加少数族裔对生物科学的参与，该研究员将把抗生素耐药性和基因组学纳入波士顿当地社区大学的一个教学模块中。本模块的目标是让学生接触研究，并向他们介绍当今社会面临的科学挑战。抗生素耐药性可以通过两种主要机制传播：抗生素耐药细菌的繁殖和抗生素耐药基因的转移。本研究旨在利用最近开发的宏基因组工具，描述耐药性在环境传播途径（人、水、动物和土壤之间）中的两种传播机制。长、短读测序将用于获得抗生素耐药菌的菌株水平信息。此外，互补方法（qPCR）将通过量化不同家庭样本（人类、动物、水、土壤）中的基因丰度来确定抗生素耐药基因的关键储存库。除了这项研究之外，该研究员还将为社区大学开发并实施一个以测序为中心的教学模块。社区大学的学生不仅可以学习最新的测序技术，而且他们收集的数据将直接贡献给一个众包数据库，该数据库将绘制美国的抗生素耐药性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. This research will investigate the spread of antibiotic resistance, which is a rising threat to society, affecting both low-and high-income countries alike. While the global spread of antibiotic resistance is readily observed, the transfer of antibiotic resistance at the household scale is not well understood. The Fellow will explore how antibiotic resistance genes propagate between humans, animals, and the environment in low-and middle-income countries at the household level. This project will identify the most important environmentally-mediated pathways for the transfer of antibiotic resistance between hosts. The knowledge obtained from understanding how antibiotic resistance spreads can be used to better devise policy, engineering controls, and suggest behavior to combat antimicrobial resistance. To increase minority participation in the biological sciences, the Fellow will incorporate antibiotic resistance and genomics in a teaching module to be used in local community colleges in Boston. The goal of this module is to expose students to research and introduce them to scientific challenges that face our society today. Antibiotic resistance can spread through two main mechanisms: propagation of antibiotic resistant bacteria and transfer of antibiotic resistance genes. This research aims to characterize both mechanisms of resistance spread in environmental transmission pathways (between humans, water, animals, soil) using recently developed metagenomic tools. Long and short read sequencing will be used to obtain strain-level information on antibiotic resistant bacteria. Additionally, complimentary methods (qPCR) will be used to identify key reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes by quantifying the abundance of genes in different household samples (humans, animals, water, soil). Beyond this research, the Fellow will develop and implement a teaching module for community colleges centered around sequencing. Not only will community college students learn about the latest sequencing techniques, but also the data they collect will directly contribute to a crowd-sourced database that maps antibiotic resistance in the United States.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.